Afterward we lay naked and sated and silent on the floor, our fingers and limbs intertwined in a perfect fit. I don’t know how long we lay like that, I just know it felt as if time was suspended. The CD player was one of those state-of-the-art ones with a lineup of CDs set up so there was no need to change the music. After some garage and some hip-hop, Wyclef came back on and suddenly we were making mad wild celebratory love and my heart was soaring as the familiar ghetto-passionate lyrics poured out of the stereo about how this was the kind of love that his mother used to warn him about and how he was in trouble.
I almost wanted to laugh because this was the sort of love Kitty wanted for me. But I didn’t laugh because I was, in trouble, that is. I was in Real Big Trouble! As Wyclef Jean pleaded for someone to dial 911, I opened my eyes and there she was, the Leggy Blonde standing in the doorway, her face etched with grief.
Richard must have felt me freeze and opened his own eyes, saw where I was looking in time to see Sally’s back as she ran from the room. He jumped off me, like I was a hot stove, and sprinted after her.
“Sally! Baby, baby, please,” he called and I lay there, naked, alone with no one to call 999 for me.
seven
There is a great deal of evidence that Lady Posche occasionally gave Edward money for his gambling debts.
It seems implausible that her husband could be unaware of this, yet he was by all accounts besotted with his wife, as letters to his family suggest. In one letter he writes to a close friend of the felicity of married life and the pleasure he derives from the beauty and charms of his adored Hen.
In another letter he urges his younger brother to enter the state of matrimony as soon as humanly possible as true happiness without marriage was to his mind impossible. His letters give no indication that his marriage was anything other than a perfect union, which contrasts with Hen’s earliest letters to her sister in which she refers to her marriage as “this arrangement.”
Secret Passage to the Past:
A Biography of Lady Henrietta Posche
By Michael Carpendum
I arrived in the grandeur of the bedroom as the morning light was slipping through a gap in the heavy purple drapes. “Oh my giddy aunt,” I moaned as I climbed into bed and snuggled into the luxury of my goose-down Egyptian-cotton pillow as the events of the past ten hours morphed hideously into events from my marriage and divorce.
God, I was a disaster area. I should be cordoned off with orange police tape, like a crime scene. Sirens should blare at my approach, or better still, I should be alarmed, marked with an X—X for do not approach. The whole thing was so sordid and wrong and poisoned with the memories of my past with Richard. With the help of a makeshift eye mask—I used my knickers—I eventually managed to fall back into a fitful sleep, dreaming I was on a highway without exit ramps. I was so tired but I couldn’t afford to fall asleep at the wheel.
I eventually woke up around four in the afternoon, propped myself up on my pillows and turned on my mobile phone to call Charlie. That was when I saw my message box was full.
I rang the service message provider to be told, “You have eight new messages.” The first four were from the girls asking where the hell I was. I deleted them all, and then, as I heard the start of a message from Richard, tears sprang to my eyes and I deleted it without listening—along with the three others that followed. There were several text messages, too—again all from Richard, but I deleted them without reading any of them. I was frightened of what they’d say…or more precisely what they wouldn’t say.
I’d spent the night at Posh House. After Richard left me naked on the floor, I had scrambled into my clothes while Leggy Blonde sobbed and Richard begged her for forgiveness in an upstairs room. I’d fled the scene and dashed into the dewy dawn, sprinting all the way back to the club in a kind of trance.
Beth, who was manning reception, explained that Charlie had taken Jean home to his place, and then the autopilot, which had got me there, forcing me to put one foot in front of the other, suddenly switched off and I slumped on the gothic church pew in reception and sobbed into my beaded handbag.
Poor Beth.
Trying to comfort a crying Lola. Breezy Lola, never fazed, never flustered. CCC Lola. The world can fall about around me but I am always the consummate professional—according to London Style magazine anyway. The girl with the plan.
What a joke. What a bizarre and rather unfunny joke.
Beth did what she could. Herbal tea, offers to talk and eventually the suggestion that I should get some sleep in one of the vacant bedrooms. I’d nodded numbly. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t go back to my flat sans Jean and risk Richard not coming to find me. At least this way I could almost convince myself that Richard has spent the night worried sick outside my flat in a panic over where I was. As traumatized as I was, in other words.
Thankfully I fell asleep from the emotional exhaustion of the night.
After I showered in the Lady Posche Suite, I rang Charlie and told him what had happened and he said he’d be with me in a jiff, which cheered me up. He was the only person I knew who said things like “in a jiff.” He even said “whoops-a-daisy” when someone fell down drunk. He didn’t even seem to mind that people found his expressions funny. When I’d take the piss about the expressions he used, he’d say, “What do you mean? Whoops-a-daisy rocks!”
A “jiff” as it turned out was two hours, by which time I’d steadied myself with milky coffee and a croissant and was grabbing the last of the daylight in the courtyard. I didn’t ring the girls. I knew what they’d say—especially Elizabeth who had never been one for mincing words—and I felt too raw for her barbed remarks about Richard and how she’d warned me, so I decided to fortify myself with Charlie, who came bounding in with the bunny bag.
I immediately took Jean out and gave her a cuddle.
“So, bit of a fuckup then, Lola old thing?” he remarked, falling into one of the courtyard chairs.
“Just a bit,” I agreed. “Oh, Jean, give it up, will you,” I scolded as she immediately started up on my arm with her trademark pelvic wiggles.
“Yes, a bit more sensitivity wouldn’t go astray, Jean!” Charlie chastised.
I was glad I’d chosen to see Charlie first. With his inimitable love-rat style he wouldn’t lecture or criticize. He’d say something like “Heck, so the girlfriend walked in. She must have had kittens!” Then he’d laugh and shake his head of tousled blond hair. That’s what I needed. A good laugh. A smile almost spread across my face in anticipation.
But he didn’t laugh or say anything amusing at all. Instead he said, “Maybe it’s time to get a grip, old girl.”
“What do you mean by ‘get a grip’ exactly?”(I didn’t even want to acknowledge the old-girl part!)
“You don’t think it’s all getting a bit out of hand, this Richard business?”
I felt my hackles rise. “By this Richard business,” I replied tartly, “I presume you mean my business?”
He smiled at me in a sad sort of way. “You can tell me I’m speaking out of turn here, but in my experience sex with the ex is like having the same car crash twice.”
“You’re speaking out of turn,” I agreed, brushing an invisible piece of lint off my jeans, not wanting to meet his eyes. “Thank you for looking after Jean,” I added in my most businesslike tone. “I’ll get out of your hair and see you Tuesday afternoon.”
He grabbed my hand. Not my wrist! My hand; interlocking his fingers into mine just as Richard had the night before, and then he pulled me into his lime-scented chest and stroked my hair.
“Oh darling, I’m sorry if I’ve been insensitive, poor you. First Jean and now me, we’re not being very helpful, are we?”
“At least you’re not humping me,” I joked.
It was so lovely having Charlie to talk to and make me feel better about my absurd behavior that I was actually really disappointed when he announced, “I’m sorry, old thing, but I’m going to have to get going so
on. Well, nowish, actually. But if you like, I can call up a car to take you home.”
I didn’t want to be alone. Being Saturday, Josie would be playing happy house with Emmanuel, and Elizabeth and Clemmie both had dates, so I told him I’d quite like to visit my parents in Richmond, and as I said it I realized it was true. Kitty and Martin were perhaps the only two people in the world who would understand and even sympathize with how I was feeling about Richard.
I arrived to find Kitty watching Kitty’s favorite film, Sunset Boulevard, on DVD. She didn’t find any similarity between herself and the character played by Gloria Swanson; you had to love her. Martin was fiddling with his clocks, but everyone stopped everything when I explained what had been happening that week between Richard and me.
“How obscenely rude, to walk in while you were making love to your own husband!” A typically insane Kitty remark but just the sort of thing I needed to hear.
“Well, technically, he’s my ex,” I reminded her.
She patted her platinum sweep of hair, and raised one eyebrow from the chaise where she was stretched out like a cat. “There’s nothing technical about love, Lola. If you want technical, get a clock.” Then she looked darkly at Martin who was fiddling with a clock face on the table. He took the hint and joined us—although still with his clock face—flopping onto a cushion at Kitty’s feet.
“Perhaps he gave her a key or something. There had been talk before I saw him of her wanting to move in.”
“No doubt she talked him into giving her one, what a sly minx. You must bring her down, Lola! Bring her down, cast her out of his life. Sherry?”
“Thanks, I will actually.”
“Martin!”
“My darling?” He smiled up at my mother’s beautiful face vaguely. She traced a line along his jaw and blew him a kiss.
“You might offer my daughter a sherry after all she’s endured.”
I cringed. It was always a bad sign when Kitty started referring to me as “her” daughter. When I was young it usually meant I was about to be shoved off to Aunt Camilla’s so they could really get the knives out and go for one another’s throats. Martin shuffled about the drinks cabinet while Kitty continued her tirade against Leggy Blonde. It was quite empowering all in all. I found that by the time Kitty finally left me to join Martin in bed, I was feeling quite incensed myself about Leggy Blonde.
As Kitty had so neatly and reasonably put it, “Presumably Richard had already dumped her, called you, realizing what you meant to him, was in the middle of a perfect union with his wife, when she stalked in as if she owned the place. Inevitably he gave the wretch a key to pick her stuff up while he was at work, not while he was in the middle of making love to his wife!”
“Ex-wife!” Elizabeth corrected as I went over Kitty’s theory with the girls at Nobu on the Sunday night.
“She sort of has a point, though,” I told Elizabeth.
“Sorry, I must have missed that under all the madness,” Elizabeth added.
Even Clemmie shrunk at her anger. “I just wish I hadn’t deleted his messages now,” I sighed, ignoring their opinions.
Elizabeth put her hand on mine. “Darling, not to dredge up the past, but repeat what it was Richard actually said to Sally when he dived off you to pursue her. You were making love, she interrupted, yet he dived off you like you were a hot stove.”
“He left you for Sally,” Clemmie added unnecessarily.
“Well, yes, but probably to take her to task,” I suggested, repeating what I had begun to believe was Kitty’s perfectly plausible explanation.
“And what words did he use to take her to task?” Elizabeth asked, her coal-black eyes glinting. I find it really hard lying to Elizabeth.
“Erm…I can’t quite remember now. It all happened so fast and then he took her up to the bedroom to sort of have a talk.”
“I bet he said, ‘I can explain!’” Clemmie suggested mixing her wasabi with her soy sauce. “Men always say that when they haven’t got an explanation. They think it will give them time to think up an excuse.”
Of course, I remembered the words, but I wasn’t going to admit to what he’d said; the memory still hurt and I knew how the girls would react to “Sally baby, please.”
“Or, ‘It’s not what it looks like’?” Elizabeth giggled, spitting her green tea back into the cup with the hilarity of it all.
“The point is,” I said stiffly, “he left all those messages and I deleted them and now I don’t know what he said.”
Elizabeth said something that I missed as I took a mouthful of my tuna sashimi with way too much wasabi and had to gulp down water to curb the explosion in my nose.
Everyone stopped laughing at whatever it was that Elizabeth had said to comfort me. But I didn’t want their comfort for a bit of errant wasabi. I wanted them to comfort and reassure me about Richard. After all, even Kitty had been able to do that.
When I got back home to Jean, I cradled her in my arms. Oh Jean, what do I do? She squirmed as I kissed her nose, so I popped her on the ground with some carrot, which she nibbled while watching the news. What would Clemmie and Elizabeth know anyway? Elizabeth just hated Richard for no real reason other than historic evidence. She claimed to care for me, but if that were true, you’d think she’d want me to be happy.
So, in the hopes of nailing the facts down once and for all, I phoned Richard. Jean sat supportively on my lap for the call. I had what I was going to say all mapped out in my brain, but then his phone went to answer, which was surprising because it was already two in the morning, tomorrow was a workday and the phone was by his bed.
I hoped he was okay. Oh no, I thought as I envisaged him wandering the streets morosely, perhaps even tearfully. He probably thought I hated him after refusing to take his calls and then not responding to his messages. Jean blinked up at me and twitched her little nose. “Good idea, Jean, I’ll try his mobile.”
And then something awful happened. He rejected my call.
I tried again, telling myself not to be paranoid, but then I was rejected again. Buggar. The walls of the flat began to come in on me as reality struck. I did what I always do in times of crisis and started compulsively organizing. I threw a load of washing into the machine, changed Jean’s litter box, and by four in the morning I was climbing the walls, having reorganized my entire wardrobe (trying Richard’s phone every half hour), lined up all my shoes, taken a Polaroid shot of each pair and glued it to the box. I’d always meant to do that even though I have never managed to put a pair of shoes back in their box in my life, preferring the more traditional strategy of throwing them in a heap in my wardrobe.
Doubts began to grip me as the dawn light started to creep through my blinds, so I took Jean down to Berkeley Square for a run. Sitting on my usual seat, I tried Richard again. Eventually he’d have to get up for work, I told myself as weariness seeped through my bones. Then again, eventually I’d have to go to bed.
eight
“For God’s sake, do not complain that you do not see me, Hen. I believe I suffer not less in this matter than you, but ’tis not to be helped. You undo me by dreaming of how happy we might have been. Alas, how can you talk of defying fortune, for nobody lives without it, least of all you, Madam.”
A day after Henrietta received this letter from Edward, he arrived in her bedchamber at dawn, penniless, with the stench of dissipation all about his person. He claimed he was a victim of muggery. It is true that his haunts were plagued with skulduggery and dark deeds. Henrietta gave him laudanum for the pain and tended his wounds herself, keeping him in her room while pretending that she was ill so that suspicion would not be aroused by the servants.
She wrote to her sister, Elizabeth: “This madness is part of my love. He is so excellently good when he is injured, Elizabeth, so gentle and obliging. If you could only see the way he looks upon me, ’tis as if he believes me an angel. I fear I may love him all the more at these times…”
Secret Passage to the Past:
By Michael Carpendum
Richard finally called me on Monday night as I was fighting my way through the white light of the paparazzi lineup outside the launch party for a new jeweler on Old Bond Street. I’d left two messages on his mobile and one at his home and three at his work. I was covering all bases, so he’d probably worked out by now that there was no escape. I wanted answers…or rather I wanted confirmation of the answers I’d already made up in my head.
“Did you not get my messages?” was his opening gambit.
“Lola…stand between Tamara and Niki!” the paparazzi yelled.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him calmly, one finger in my ear, a smile glued to my face. Niki arranged me in the center as the white light of a thousand flashbulbs exploded in my face. “I was upset, and I just deleted them all.”
He exhaled. “Yeah, I’m sorry, too.”
Niki and Tamara left me just inside the entrance, out of the glare of the press, told me they’d catch up with me inside while I listened to Richard’s long pause. Even above the noise of the throng I could feel the pain in his voice and my heart went out to him. “It’s not your fault she pitched up like that,” I told him in my most indignant tone, just to reassure him that I understood.
“No, I mean I’m sorry you didn’t listen to my messages. I mean, I should have said—”
I cut in, determined to believe the explanation I’d concocted for him, “Waltzing in like that, unannounced. It just frightened the life out of me,” I told him. My learner wheels were off now, I was playing the role of supportive wife perfectly. “It wasn’t exactly ideal, and given the circumstances, the best thing I could do was leave you to you. Poor you, having to deal with her on your own.”
Sex with the Ex Page 8
